Spaulding Turnpike drivers may get faster tolls

Drivers caught in rush-hour traffic on the Spaulding Turnpike may get some relief if legislation passes the New Hampshire House of Representatives.

The New Hampshire Senate recently passed Senate Bill 134, which calls for all automated electronic tolling in Dover and Rochester on the Spaulding, as well as Hooksett. On Wednesday, the House will hold a committee hearing on the bill, which would eliminate toll takers. Drivers who do not have a E-ZPass transponder would still pass through tolls at full speed and receive a bill at a later date based on license plate photos.

The upgrades would include open-road tolling at the three sites in order to reduce traffic congestion. According to New Hampshire Department of Transportation Deputy Commissioner Chris Wazczuk, passage of the bill would give the DOT leeway to determine if automated electronic tolling (AET) will work for future projects, too.

“We feel that the future is in all-electronic tolling,” said Wazczuk. “We want to make an environment where it’s beneficial to use the E-ZPass.”

Currently, 75 percent of all transactions at tolls in New Hampshire are done via E-ZPass transponders, according to Wazczuk. He said there is a low violation rate for unpaid tolls among New Hampshire residents, but acknowledged the biggest challenge to AET expansion would be the administrative work in following up and billing drivers who do not have E-ZPass.

“There’s a significant amount of back office work in identifying the license plate image, identifying the associated address with the plate and sending an invoice and being able to collect the tolls,” Wazczuk said. “We’ll have to expand our agreements with other states in order to maintain compliance.”

Wazczuk said New Hampshire is part of an agreement with Massachusetts and Maine where each state’s DOT will bill in-state for individuals who run tolls in the other two states. However, outside of Massachusetts and Maine, NHDOT can obtain addresses from other states and send unpaid toll bills, but there is no enforcement capability.

In New Hampshire, drivers can have their automobile registration renewal denied if they have not paid their tolls, which Wazczuk said is a sufficient enforcement mechanism in-state. He said out-of-state drivers mostly use E-ZPass so the need for enforcement of billing would be limited.

State Sen. David Watters, D-Dover, is the primary sponsor of the bill. Watters said his motivation for introducing the bill was concern for his constituents who live near the Spaulding Turnpike and have to listen to air brakes from tractor trailers slowing to pay cash tolls or travel through the E-ZPass lane during all hours of the day and night. The AET system would allow for high-speed lanes at the tolls and reduce the need for braking.

Watters said that the two tolls on the Spaulding Turnpike could be renovated at a cost of $3 million to $4 million each. He included the Hooksett site in the bill because it lies on the Interstate 93 off-ramp and traffic backs up onto the highway.

“Right now traffic gets backed up onto the highway in Hooksett,” said Watters. “It’s a real safety concern.”

One concern of AET’s would be the fate of the 20 full- and part-time employees at both the Dover and Rochester toll plazas. Wazczuk said the Hooksett toll plaza only has a couple of staff members. He said that toll operators would fill vacancies at other plazas around the state that still had cash payment lanes.

“We would manage it so it would result in no layoffs,” said Wazczuk.

Watters said he did not have many concerns with respect to job loss because of vacancies to be filled at other toll plazas across the state. However, Watters said he sees this bill as a pilot program for the state and hopes the state moves towards all-AET in the coming years and he is confident that the state would not have to lay off toll workers in the future and could place them into other jobs instead.

“The Department of Transportation does a tremendous job of reeducating and retraining employees with the goal of — if these jobs are to go away — they’ll receive an opportunity to be placed into other positions in the system,” said Watters. “We’re going to proceed cautiously with this to make sure this will work for the rest of the state.”

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